


Maybe Sprout Wings

by blueinkedbones



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Robot AU, What am I doing, a bot is a gift
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 07:19:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1460671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueinkedbones/pseuds/blueinkedbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As if Stiles Stilinski's day isn't going terribly enough, he nearly trips over his dropped 'n' chopped former babysitter on his way home.</p><p>Which sounds bad. It sounds really, really bad, doesn't it. Day already gone to crap, and here it is at his feet: half of the bot who pretty much raised him after his mom died, the gash in her synthetic skin spilling singed circuitry like an overstuffed cornucopia.</p><p>But the thing is, Stiles is fine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maybe Sprout Wings

_I thought of old friends_  
_the ones who'd gone missing_  
_Said all their names three times_  
_Phantoms in the early dark_  
_Canaries in the mines_

 _Ghosts and clouds_  
_And nameless things_  
_Squint your eyes and hope real hard_  
_Maybe sprout wings_

_\- the Mountain Goats, Maybe Sprout Wings_

 

As if Stiles Stilinski's day isn't going terribly enough, he nearly trips over his dropped 'n' chopped former babysitter on his way home.

Which sounds bad. It sounds really, really bad, doesn't it. Day already gone to crap, and here it is at his feet: half of the bot who pretty much raised him after his mom died, the gash in her synthetic skin spilling singed circuitry like an overstuffed cornucopia.

But the thing is, Stiles is fine.

Sure, maybe he might get a little choked up at the sight of her eyes, dull and sightless, staring forever at nothing, or the way her mouth is slightly open, like maybe the Term caught her mid-sentence. Like maybe she saw them and started screaming.

Not that anyone would've come once they realized she was a bot, of course, but she could be awfully convincing.

And yeah, maybe the way her hair still smells vaguely of green apples, even with half her face pressed into the scorched dirt, maybe that kind of thing would make any guy a little sentimental, thinking back to when they were a stupid kid who didn't know better, who thought their babysitter, their best friend left in the world, was human. And actually maybe gave a shit about them.

But that's the point: It's not human. It's a bot. A supercomputer in a person suit, a hyper-synthetic mimicking _machine_ , and that's it.

So if Stiles is mourning anything when he gets on his knees by its side, presses his lips together tight, and closes its eyelids, it's his imaginary friend, Laura. And the thing about Laura is, she's imaginary, and the thing about Stiles is, he's twenty-three fuckin' years old. So he is not about to do that.

So he stands up, walks the fuck away.

For about fifteen steps.

Then a shadow passes behind him, and he changes his mind.

 

Look, he's not being sentimental about tech. He's not an idiot, or—His mother wasn't an idiot. But she was wrong. Stiles isn't so blinded by nostalgia that he can't pick up on obvious things like the difference between synth and real life as a fully-grown adult who isn't trying to fill the hole his mom left behind with all the things she loved. Maybe he could keep up that kind of delusion if he had a bunch of bots playing house with him, but his job—the job that is giving him hell right now, incidentally—kind of shatters the illusion like a workman's boot over a Faberge egg.

There's only so many times you can assemble and disassemble a bot before you realize the illusion only goes as far as their synthetic skin.

Which, Stiles will now pointedly point out, is _synthetic_.

So he's not being sentimental by salvaging the bot's broken body from the street. At most, he's bringing his work home with him.

 

He puts the bot on a low shelf, steps back, and frowns. Comes back two minutes later with a UTA college sweatshirt and a blue bed sheet, makes the bot decent. It's kind of awkward; synthetic skin is pretty much identical to the real thing. From the outside, at least. And—fine, it's a bot, but it still... feels real. Like a real girl.

Not that Stiles is lingering, or anything. The bot smells like scorched plastic, leather, and vague electricity, and to be honest, unresponsive really isn't his ballgame.

He can't say the same for Terms. For all their fear of bots and what they represent, they sure seem to love screwing around with the d&c ones. At least going by what half they leave behind, and what half they take home. God, Stiles feels kind of sick just thinking about it. Sure, it's synthetic, it's not real, a bot is a gift, built to serve, blah blah blah.... But they look scarily human, even with metal bone shards poking out of their sliced-open chests, and you've gotta be pretty twisted to see a happy ending in that, if you ask Stiles. Not that “Term” and “twisted” are that far apart in the encyclopedia of life. Stiles has been surrounded by bots all his life, and he's seen maybe one Term-confirm in all that time.

And fine, it's _creepy_ , but since Scott became Stiles' patient X, it's been the best bodyguard Stiles could find.

Mom called it Peter.

 

Scotty's already home when Stiles pulls the bed sheet over Laura's body and closes the drawer, which is why he's doubly glad he rethought the low shelf placement. Scott gets all doe-eyed looking at broken bots, it's horrible. It's only gotten worse since Stiles built the tech that saved his life. If he knew Stiles got the mech from parts Peter didn't need, he'd probably try to put them back.

Which is exactly why Stiles isn't planning on telling him.

“Yo!” he says instead, dropping down onto the couch and looping an arm around Scott's shoulders. “Tell me something awesome that'll challenge the world of suck that is work at BHIT.”

Scott does not look awesome. Scott does not even look okay. Scott looks like someone dropped and chopped a bot right in front of him.

“A Term cut a girl in half,” Scott says shakily. “Right in front of me. I heard her scream.”

 _Damn_  Stiles' uncanny knack for reading Scott's facial expressions.

“But she was a bot, right?” he says, trying to temper the situation somehow.

“I don't know,” Scott whispers.

“Well, what did her insides look like?” Stiles tries. “Kind of sloppy and splattered all over the place, or just dangling a little bit like a Slinky peeking out of a rubber Pringles can?”

“I couldn't look,” Scott says, horrified. “I could've been next!”

“C'mon, you're too human for a Term,” Stiles says, trying to sound comforting. He's obviously terrible at it, because Scott just goes wobbly-lipped and says, “So was she, Stiles!”

“Look, dude, I bet you two hundred bucks it was a bot they sliced up,” Stiles says, jumping to his feet. “C'mon, let's go look, I bet no one's even looted the body yet. And if they have,” Stiles snaps his fingers, “then it's obviously not human, you'd have to be nuts to go for that.”

 

“She looked real,” Scott says stubbornly as they walk. “She sounded real. When she screamed....” He shudders.

“Three hundred bucks,” Stiles counters. “Where'd you say you saw her?”

“Not far from here,” Scott says, eyes darting so wildly he nearly trips over his own feet.

“Easy, easy,” Stiles says, steadying him. “It's gonna be okay, man. It's just gonna be a bot. I swear.”

“Stiles,” Scott says, eyes fixed on a patch of bushes near the ground.

“I'm telling you, it's just—”

“Stiles,” Scott says sharply. Stiles snaps to attention, follows Scott's eye line.

“Oh, god. Not wildlife,” he jokes. “You know how I feel about flora, Scotty.”

“Shut up,” Scott hisses. “There's someone there. Behind the plants.”

“Ooo-kay,” Stiles says slowly. Whatever, he's been through a trauma. Stiles can humor him. “This someone, would they happen to be, I don't know, armed and dangerous?”

“What? No!” Scott whispers. “He looks like he's sleeping. Or...”

“Scott, if this is another slashed bot—”

“It isn't.”

“All I'm saying is, maybe you've had your fill of gore for today. We can come back tomorrow and be—Oh, we're going over there. Okay.”

 

"Shit, Stiles, he’s hurt."

For some reason, Scott's whispering, which in Stiles' expert opinion is pretty pointless. Either the bot is powered off, in which case shouting into its ear would achieve about as much as singing a song to a toaster, or it's functional, and can hear a whisper as loud as a bullet breaking the sound barrier.

"He can’t be _hurt_ ," Stiles scoffs, instead of pointing this out. "He’s a bot."

"He’s curled up and holding his side," Scott says, then, "Stiles! He’s _crying_."

"It’s synthetic," Stiles says stubbornly. "It’s not real."

"It sure _looks_ real—"

"Of course it does," Stiles says, rolling his eyes. "That’s the point, it’s to warn you not to misuse it, or whatever. It’s like—like a check engine light."

But he takes a breath, stretches out his hand. The bot trembles under his touch.

It does look real. Real enough to spark a doubt in every long-held certainty Stiles has about the things.

Machines don’t tremble. It’s not built into their system. Just like it’s not built into their system to lay curled up like a kicked dog, or to _fear_ anything. How could a machine feel fear? How could a machine even fake it?

The bot looks like a normal if stupidly attractive human man, nebulously aged between twenty and thirty. His dark henley is streaked with dirt, and his jeans are patchy at the knees. Dark circles sleep under his closed eyes. Tear stains trail from the corners, leaving tracks. His breath rattles in his throat, human and hurt.

The breathing is synthetic, of course. To put children at ease. Once he knew the truth, it was easy for Stiles to understand that everything else was synthetic too, no matter how human it looked.

Mom talked to her bots. Treated them like people. Dad thought it was stupid, but Mom didn’t care. She wouldn’t just disable them at night, she’d talk to them, promise she’d bring them back again in the morning. She said one model was afraid of the dark, so she wouldn't power it off.

It made so much sense, once.

Stiles shakes his head, snaps himself out of it.

She was his mom, and she was... She was his mom. But that doesn't mean she was right about this.

It doesn't.

Still, there isn’t any harm in taking the abused bot in, running a few diagnostics.

"Alright," Stiles says, feeling stupidly self-conscious. "I’ll take it—take him home." At Scott’s incredulous look, he adds, "There’s a manual, okay? There are rules to prevent this kind of stuff. I don’t care if it’s real or not, you’ve gotta be psycho to see this response and keep going."

"It was probably a Term," Scott says, jaw tight. "Or more than one."

Stiles swallows back bile. “Let’s just get him out of here before they come back and start taking us apart, huh?”

The bot is warm under Stiles’ hands, even as he trembles. Stiles lays his palm over the bot’s tensed shoulder, is jolted by a million year old memory.

The bot’s eyes fly open, vivid green and wide with panic.

"Hey, it’s okay," Stiles says, still not at all sure what he's doing. "Whoever had you before obviously hurt you bad, and—"

He swallows hard.

He doesn't really do sincerity. Sincerity to a _bot_? He must be losing it.

If Dad saw this... 

The bot's looking right at him. 

Still just barely trembling, vulnerability on full display.

"That shouldn’t have happened," Stiles says firmly. "Misuse like that, that’s—that's messed up."

If it's a mod, an Easter egg in the bot's programming, it's a good one. Scarily believable. 

It opens up a whole new world of possibilities, once Stiles starts thinking about it. Bot _actors_. About time someone replaced those overpaid, out of touch douchebags. And bots don't take salaries, and you know what that means—more green for the Tech who plugs them into a new industry. 

The bot smirks, lips thinning.

“A bot is a gift,” it says flatly.

 

"No," Stiles says, something like anger swirling up in him. Past the dizzying calculations, the bells and whistles already going off in Stiles' head. Think of the time a bot could save. One take, every time. One perfect shot, with the perfect lighting, or hundreds of identical ones. No burnout with every adjustment and alteration, just preternatural precision, perfect recall. Think how much something like that could be _worth!_

Unless it's some _one_.

_A bot is a gift._

"No," Stiles says again. "That's not..."

That's just some ancient tag line. Those cringey commercials back in the early 20s, back when bots were being hyped like souped up, infinitely multifunctional iPhones. Like toys for Christmas, or Sims 3D. Your new best friend.

Your blinking, breathing body pillow.

It's suddenly impossible to explain.

"There’s a manual," Stiles tries. "There are rules. Regulations. People can’t just—throw you around, that’s not okay."

The bot scoffs. His nostrils flare.

“Oh, there's a _manual_ ,” he says. “Well this changes everything. Why didn't I think of that? I could've stopped running years ago.”

“You're not running,” Stiles points out.

The bot rolls his eyes violently.

“Look, a genius,” he says flatly. “I'm out of power, idiot.”

“You have a solar panel,” Stiles says. This is his job, after all. He's kind of good at it.

“Yeah, it's very helpful,” the bot says sarcastically. “Great for standing out in the open, waiting to get chopped in half.”

“Yeah, and how's the 'hiding and hoping nobody sees me' method working out for you?” Stiles challenges.

“Wonderful,” the bot says. “You gonna kill me, or wait for one of your buddies to come do it for you?”

Stiles rears back, insulted. “What about me says Term to you?”

“So you're a Tech,” the bot says dryly. “Congratulations.”

“Techs don't kill bots,” Stiles says loftily. “We figure out how they work. You're welcome.”

“I'm sure it's for my benefit,” the bot says, not even trying to use punctuation anymore. “I just wish I could find some way to express my gratitude. Oh, is that what that switch is for.”

Stiles goes pink.

“We don't use that,” he snaps.

Well.

To be fair.

“I don't use that,” he amends, almost apologetically.

The libido switch is by far the creepiest part of bots, if not the anatomically identical everything. He gets the logic behind it, it's just... there's something intrinsically _wrong_ about it. Even if they're synthetic, it's too real. Too deep into the uncanny valley, you know? Too sleazy to even think about for too long.

Stiles has made a lifetime of not thinking about things for too long.

On the upside, it's probably why he doesn't come home crying every day.

There's something wrong with this whole conversation, and here it is: Stiles is talking to a bot, and the bot's answering him. These aren't database answers, this is the opposite of a sell, he's not mimicking anything, he's genuinely—

Passing the fucking Turing test.

There's gotta be something Stiles is missing. This is nuts, come on. He's arguing with a _bot_.

He _knows_ these things, inside at out. Every nut and bolt and neuron. Every data chip, every line of code. This is his _job._ His life.

He knows what these things can do, and what they can't.

Either this guy is some Tech's beta, some unauthorized escaped experiment, or...

Or the Terms, and Mom, were right.

“Look,” he snaps, trying to regain some control over the situation. “Do you want to come home with me or not? It's not a hotel or anything, but there are places to charge, and books—”

“Go home with a Tech,” the bot says, slowly, like Stiles is an idiot. “Sounds healthy. Where do I sign up?”

“I'm not gonna hurt you!” Stiles says defensively, and immediately feels ridiculous. He's defending himself to a bot. That's what this day has turned into.

Or he's _talking to AI_. History in the making right in front of his face, and he's just too much of a skeptic to see it.

"I don't wanna hurt you," he says, quieter.

“Of course not,” the bot says, like just saying words to Stiles is exhausting. “You just wanna _figure out how I work_.”

“I have a friend who's a bot,” Scott interrupts.

Stiles raises an eyebrow at him.

“ _Peter_ ,” Scott says meaningfully, stepping on Stiles' foot.

“Oh," Stiles says, stupidly. "Peter, right. Great guy. Always good for a—”

Scott puts all his weight into crushing Stiles' big toe.

“—meaningful conversation about bot equality,” Stiles finishes.

Scott gets off him.

“You have a friend who's a bot,” the bot says. “And a friend who's a Tech. How does that work, huh?”

“Stiles isn't like that,” Scott says loyally. “He wouldn't hurt you. _Or_ try to figure out how you work,” he adds, before the bot can retort.

“Is that right.”

“Yeah!” Stiles says, kind of insulted. Which is maybe not fair, because those are not the same things, at all. He got into this to help his mom, to help Scott. He shouldn't have to defend himself to a high-tech Real Doll.

And hey, if he's such an unfeeling jackass, why's he offering to keep an illegal bot in his house, huh? Believe it or not, Stiles does not have a death wish.

“Why?” the bot asks.

“Why what?” Stiles says blankly.

“You're a Tech,” the bot says. “Why wouldn't you try to take me apart?”

“Because you look like you've already been through enough, okay?” Stiles says. “And I don't—I don't want you to get chopped. What else do you need? Do I have to pass a polygraph?”

“Why do you care?”

“Oh my god,” Stiles says, throwing his hands up in the air. “Can't a guy try to prevent some major carnage without getting interrogated around here? There's a manual. Obviously whoever had you last didn't follow it. I'm not about to top that off with any extra horrible. Can you shut up and let me—”

"Right, the _manual_ ,” the bot says. “What does the _manual_ say about cutting us open, then?"

"Those are extremists," Stiles says. "You can't judge us all off a couple of nuts."

"A couple," the bot says. "You're a tech. You know our programming. What we were _built_ for."

"It wasn't any one thing," Stiles says. 

"Wasn't it?" the bot says. "Tell me it's not built into every one of you to want to fuck me."

"Whoa, okay," Stiles says, stepping back, hands up. "I tried to be nice, but..."

" _Nice_ ," the bot echoes.

Scoffs.

"I know you," he says. "You built us to serve you. To be everything you could never have with a real person. Any function, any _fantasy_. And you know what? There's not a single original one. It's the same sick song, every time." 

Of course it happens. The dark net, the shades of gray. It's simple math to most, an easy solve. There are sick people in the world. Lonely people. You can let them stew, until they erupt all over the news, or you can offer them an alternative. A sugar substitute so good you barely taste the difference. 

 _Nice_ was probably the wrong word to use. Every one of those ticking time bombs is sure to mention the paradox sometime.

No one ever falls for the _nice guy_.

"I've never done anything like that," Stiles says. "Scott, Scott would kill me." He thumps Scott on the shoulder demonstratively, See?  _Look_ at him, he's the sweetest. "He loves you guys."

Scott nods earnestly.

"Like pets," the bot says, too dry. Every mimetic muscle in his face projecting boredom, skepticism, cold swallowed rage. _Well aren't I a lucky bot_.

"Scott's a good person," Stiles says, offended for his sake. "The best. He'd never hurt a fly. Literally. He gathers them up in cups and takes outside. Once a bird flew into our window, and he _cried_ for—"

"I don't care about _kindness_ ," the bot says. "Good _intentions_. It all ends the same. With collars, and cages."

"Oh my god," Stiles says. It's uncanny, this thing's too-human delivery. Past mimetics, into _organic response_.

Stiles' head spins.

"I wouldn't do any of that," he says.

The bot snorts.

"I mean it," Stiles says stubbornly. "You have a polygraph scan, right? Tell me if I’m lying." He looks the bot in the eyes, says, “I wouldn’t do any of that to you. I swear.”

“Polygraphs aren’t reliable," the bot says, but he blinks, obviously unsettled.

A bot  _can't_ be unsettled. Wary, fine. That just makes them better bodyguards, carers, police dogs. It's a benefit. A security upgrade.

Being unsettled sets you _back_.  

Haltingly, the bot says, "You think I’ve never been lied to before?”

"I’m sorry," Stiles says.

It's so easy, snapping back to old instincts. Poor broken bot, as vulnerable and jaded as a bullied kid.

Even a thought like that doesn't stick. Stiles is already too caught up in the narrative.  

"I’m really," he says again, finds he means it. "I'm really, really sorry..."

He waits, but the bot doesn't fill the silence.

"...man," Stiles finishes awkwardly. Gives in, just asks. "What’s your name?"

"Derek," says Scott, tapping his temple. Derek’s eyes widen, fix on him.

"You’re human," he says, after some consideration.

He sounds disappointed.

Stiles tries not to take that too personally.

"Not completely," Scott says. "Stiles fixed me up. I was having a little trouble breathing, and he—"

Derek scrambles backward, eyes wild. “You really are a Tech,” he says.

"Yeah, so? I didn’t hurt anyone," Stiles says defensively, going pink. "I used scraps, okay? I didn’t even disturb anyth—anyone’s functioning! I just found what I needed to help Scott. That’s all."

"And how did you figure out which scraps did what?" Derek demands. "I know what Techs do."

His voice shouldn't be able to vibrate like that. Come so close to cracking, sound so _alive_.

"You’re glorified Terms," he says. "Just more likely to clean up after you take us apart."

"That's not fair," Stiles says, but the whole world is turning inside out.

 _You’re glorified Terms_.

Like he's seen enough of both to know.

No bot could ever survive that. Terms _and_ Techs. Or just one of them, honestly. Being assembled and disassembled, being—whatever sick thing Terms are into. A synthetic, barely sentient thing, subservience literally written into their DNA? No way. 

That's what makes Terms extremists: they're the only one who actually think bots could ever be a _threat_. Could rise up, fight back.

Real life Terminators.

The end of the world as we know it. 

It's survivalist paranoia.

It's _impossible_.

But here's this one, spitting in a Tech's face like it's the easiest thing in the world.

 

This day fucking _sucks_.

Work bullshit, Laura's body, that was _nothing_. Not next to everything Stiles knows shattering to pieces.

And now Stiles' stupid eyes are prickling. 

He swipes at them, says, "Look, will you just let me help you? I can disable your pain, if you want."

"And make it easier to take me apart when I’m not screaming?" Derek says suspiciously. "Don’t bother."

"That’s not it," Scott says, looking injured by the accusation. "He’s not like whoever hurt you. He helps people."

"I’m not people," Derek snaps.

It's still stunningly impossible to actually digest the implications here. What this _means_. 

If this is possible, what makes him an anomaly? What makes Stiles so sure that's what he is?

"I’m a bot," Derek says. "Built to serve."

He is. _They are_. So how is he _doing this_?

Stiles can't think anymore.

"Look, will you shut up and let me save your life?" he demands. "You’re tired of running, right? So— _don’t_. I have chargers, okay. And... books."

Mom always gave them books. Old ones, made of paper, with real spines, real pages. She thought...

Stiles juts his jaw, eyes bright.

"Just," he says. "Do you want help or not?"

"I don’t need your kind of help," Derek mutters.

"Fine," Stiles says. Whatever, whatever. Some broken bot developed sarcasm, so what? Some tech installed some experimental patch. Some limited edition sympathy fuck for the sad sacks.

It doesn't have to mean anything.

"Have it your way," he says. He's surprised by how shaken he sounds. How much he's shaking, suddenly, with something like fury, at this lie. At its _programmer_.

There has to be something really wrong with you, building a mindfuck like that.

"Have it fucking your way," he says. "Get slashed in half by some psycho. Or just lay here until your lights go out, and never wake up. See if I care." He's stupidly transparent; he can't look Scott in the face. "C’mon, Scott, lets go."

"Are you sure..." Scott says, hesitating. Watching Stiles; he can feel it without making sure. They know each other too well.

"He made his decision," Stiles says frostily. "I wouldn’t wanna disrespect his fucking autonomy, would you?" His eyes burn. He can't look directly at anything. "Let’s _go._ "

 

Once they're gone, Derek closes his eyes, lets out the sob he’d held trapped between his teeth.

Some uncontrollable, self-destructive part of him is almost tempted by the offer the human made.

Stiles.

 _Stiles wouldn't do that_ , his friend said, so sure. Just as easily as he'd tapped into the neural network, plucked out Derek's name.

Humans shouldn't be able to do that. 

But of course they would, if they could. Humans take everything. Steal everything, use everything, destroy everything.

It's their core programming. 

The air gets colder, dampness seeping through Derek's skin, chilling him to the circuits. His energy runs low and lower as the sun sinks out of sight, his eyes closing of their own accord.

There's nothing he can do.

He's powerless.

 

Sunlight slips between the dense leaves, switches Derek on again. He shifts sleepily, unexpectedly warm. Despite his bed of dense-packed wet dirt and prickling, crawling life, he feels almost comfortable.

There's a blanket draped over him, fighting off the chill. Tucked under it is a battery pack, turned on and thrumming.

Derek stares.

Battery packs cost a fortune, and then some. With more and more Terms threatening anyone with so much as a barcode tattoo, buying a bot-compatible battery pack paints a giant flaming target over your chest. Even if you can find a discreet source, the prices are an arm and a leg. 

More likely an entire lower half.

There isn’t a note anywhere. He can’t help looking, anyway. Some traitorous part of his code has him trusting humans at the first kind word.

Not that Stiles had been kind. He’d called Derek synthetic as easily as an Argent, talked about him like he wasn’t even there. Called him _it_. Without his friend’s urging, he never would’ve bothered to consider Derek anything more than an object.

Maybe it had been Scott, the more sympathetic of the two. Maybe the tech in his chest made him see Derek as something like family.

But Stiles put his hand on Derek’s shoulder, and for a second he’d almost thought—

He'd thought wrong.

Derek knows better than that. Than _this_. Knows exactly how humans work: one day, they just stop. Give out. The system gets compromised, and their functions go offline, and they go empty. No repairs, no reboots.

There was one human who didn't take kindness and twist it into ownership. Who raised Derek in something like home. Into something like family.

And she's gone.

All of this is some kind of trick. Using the battery pack would probably make Stiles Derek’s legal owner. There's some catch, some trap. He can’t risk it.

His freedom is the only thing he has.

The pain kicks in at once, receptors coming back to life in one shocking jolt, and he gasps, rocking with it, and finds something in his way on the ground beside him. He scans it with pain-fogged eyes, his simulated breath a sharpened razor in his synthetic throat.

It's a paper book, not just words but scent and texture. History. Context. Hard-covered and in good condition, wrapped in protective plastic. The price sticker has been peeled off, leaving a gluey residue. Derek refuses to scan the barcode.

It doesn’t matter what it cost. He can’t be bought like this, turned docile and obedient with a few pricey presents. 

The pain overtakes him then, travels through him like a current. A thousand volts, a flamethrower. 

Bots were built to serve, and how can you serve without empathy? Sympathy is meaningless, counterproductive. Your own discomfort, your confident misconceptions projected onto others. The only way to make bots _understand_ human pain was to give it to them. 

But pain should have a purpose. A source. This doesn't. It's everywhere at once, fire and biting cold.

Derek scans his hardware, then his software, eyes streaming, body quivering in the damp dirt.

It's almost too simple. 

The savior fantasy is a human favorite right along with sadism. The dual impulse to create and destroy.

Disassemble and reassemble.

The Tech wooed him with some soft sympathy, some clever gifts.

And infected him with malware.

Derek drags himself up, biting down hard to keep from screaming.  

Moments like this, that built part of him is so predictable, it's sickening. That dependence, that _trust_. The frantic alerts piling up in his scan results.

_Tech assistance required._

Humans love their little jokes.

**Author's Note:**

> ugh. don't even look at me, i'm terrible. 
> 
> i swear i'm working on the other updates/owed fic. it's just that the words are taking a stupidly long amount of time to actually form on the page. meanwhile, have some angsty philosophical robot politics fic featuring the same pun repeated around 60 times.
> 
> /hides face in shame


End file.
